Chapter 75
SEVENTY-FIVE
EMMA
Packing with translation went a hell of a lot faster than doing it by hand.
Obviously.
But something in me needed to do it manually. Like folding up my clothes and boxing all my crap was the only way to properly say goodbye to my life at Cyclos. Every drawer I emptied, every old item I touched, made it feel more real.
Not like Sean and Jackson, who’d jumped to Crown together two hours ago, still basking in their nauseating relationship-bliss.
Then again—attached to Caden’s hip as I was—who was I to judge?
I was halfway through clearing out all my bathroom junk when I heard footsteps, heavy, and confident. The door opened, and Caden walked into the room like he owned it.
Which, by now, he kind of did.
“Be right there,” I called over my shoulder, then tossed the last few things into the bag and rushed out to meet him.
My man.
Mine.
I practically skipped across the room to kiss him.
But the second I saw him, my heart twisted.
Something was off.
He looked…distant. Cold. More like the closed-off bastard I’d first met at Coastal, not the person I’d gotten to know over this past year and a half.
I faltered mid-step, my smile dimming with the shift in his expression.
He didn’t come to me. Didn’t move at all. Just stood there like a statue, arms at his sides, eyes shadowed and unreadable.
Standing before him, I leaned in to kiss him, instinctively reaching for something familiar, but he turned his head ever so slightly, enough for my lips to brush his cheek instead.
The rejection was small. Barely noticeable.
But it felt like a slap.
I stilled before I pulled back slowly, feeling very confused, while a knot already formed in my chest.
“What’s going on?” I asked softly, brows furrowed.
His jaw clenched. “I need to talk to you about Crown.”
His voice was rough, scraping over the words like they tasted bad in his mouth, but his tone was too flat. It was the kind of flat that meant he was holding something in.
“Oh, okay… I’m almost done packing. I know it’s taking me longer than I said, but I just wanted to do it manually one last—”
“You’re not coming with me.”
I blinked first. Then laughed. “Geez, I’ll learn to pack faster. No reason to kick me out just yet, Mister First Offensive.”
“Emma…”
The way he said my name. It broke something inside him… I heard it. Felt it.
I crossed my arms. “What the hell is going on?”
As I studied him, I realized his eyes were burning, not with anger, but with agony.
“Are you in pain?” I whispered, my pulse spiking. “Do I need to heal you or something?”
He closed his lids for a beat, before he said, “This is something even you cannot heal.”
A chill crawled down my spine. “Caden, you’re scaring the crap out of me. Please. Just tell me what’s going on.”
His eyes finally met mine.
“I made you a promise,” he said, his voice rough. “I swore to you, over and over again, I’d help you find out who labeled you a terrorist. Who ordered your arrest. Who was behind the murder of your parents. And that I’d help you avenge them.”
I let out the breath I had realized I was holding, as the tension bled out of my shoulders.
“That’s what this is about?” I said, smiling faintly with relief. “Caden…it’s okay. You were right. Gordon—Maurice—whatever the hell he was calling himself—he was probably manipulating me. Lying to me. Twisted up over the fact my mom chose my dad over him. Couldn’t handle it.”
I shook my head, trying to brush it away, to bring him back from whatever edge he was standing on.
“Whatever the reason, my father ordered my arrest to lure me to him and then gave the order to kill them. I hate I wasn’t the one driving a blade through his heart, but he still got what was coming to him in the end.”
Caden didn’t blink.
And then he spoke. “He wasn’t lying.”
The way he said it…. Cold, sharp, and final. No room for doubt. No room for hope.
I blinked up him, while my heart started thudding like a war drum in my chest.
“When he found out you killed those militants at your home,” Caden continued sounding too detached, “he contacted the president of the United States directly. He requested a warrant for your arrest…and asked you’d be placed under his custody. But he never issued the original warrant for terrorism.”
The question came out tight. Small. “How are you so certain of this?”
He didn’t look away. “Because Maurice shared his memory of that conversation in the White House,” he said. “And I received a copy of it.”
I swallowed hard. “Cara?”
He nodded once.
Of course it was her. Who else would be bold enough to dig that deep and hand over a truth with blood still on it?
“Okay…” I breathed, barely more than a whisper.
Caden took a step toward me. Slow. Careful. Like I was a glass thing on the verge of shattering, and he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to catch me or let me break.
His tone was low when he spoke again. “When those militants shot your parents with a human rifle gun…you assumed they were human.”
I nodded slowly, heart pounding harder with every syllable.
“But they weren’t.”
My breath caught in my throat. “What are you saying?”
“They used human weapons because of the bubble. It was the only way to kill them, considering using translation would’ve been lethal to them. But the people who killed your parents…” He paused, looking me dead in the eyes.
“They were magi.”
I stood frozen, like the words had turned my blood to stone.
A wave of ice surged through me. My limbs went numb.
“Collabs?” I asked, my hands trembling.
Caden shook his head once.
“Caden…” My voice cracked. “Just tell me. Please. Who was behind this, who ordered my arrest? Who gave the order to kill my parents?”
He still didn’t look away.
“I did,” he said, sounding hollow and dead. “They were Crown’s Offensives. Sent there…by me.”
It felt like the floor gave out beneath me.
My knees buckled, and I sat down hard on the edge of the bed, because suddenly I couldn’t trust my legs to hold me. Couldn’t trust anything.
“No…” I whispered, shaking my head slowly, as if I could physically reject the words. “That’s not possible.”
But the look on his face didn’t change.
Caden started pacing, his movements tight, clipped, like he was trying to outrun the guilt or cage the panic threatening to spill out.
“I didn’t know,” he said. “After the Great Exposure, everything was chaos. Threats were coming in from all sides. People were vanishing, getting attacked, hiding. I was about to leave for Monaco to track down a human ring experimenting on magi, when I got a nex from Charles Bailor, my Leader.”
He looked at me, eyes raw.
“He told me there was a former Crown resident operating on US soil. Said they were collaborating with humans, getting ready to abduct magi. Said they were living in the Human World. Said it was urgent. He made it sound like it was a man he was after. Some asshole gone rogue.”
Caden swallowed hard. “Back then, I had no idea you’d left Cyclos. I didn’t even know he was talking about Boston.”
His voice wavered, barely, but enough to feel like something breaking open inside him.
“I told Charles I needed to verify the intel, that I had no knowledge of any former Crown citizen working with humans,” he continued. “But I was already leaving the Collective, and I was in a hurry.”
“Charles worried I’d be gone for too long; said we couldn’t take the risk to wait until I was back. Suggested issuing a simple arrest warrant. Said if it turned out to be bad intel, we’d simply let the guy go. No harm done. Just…cover our bases. Make sure he couldn’t vanish while I was gone.”
He dragged a hand over his face, as if he could scrub the memory out of existence.
“I gave the verbal order for the arrest of a traitor,” he said, barely above a whisper. “I signed off on it. Didn’t even look at the document…”
Tears slid down my cheeks, unnoticed until they hit my hands. I didn’t even feel them fall. Only the cold after.
“While I was in Monaco,” he went on, and this time his voice cracked wide open, “he nexed me again. Said they’d located the perpetrator. Said there were others in the house.”
He looked at me, and I could see the moment the dam broke behind his eyes.
“He asked if our Offensives had clearance to eliminate anyone who interfered with the arrest.”
I shook my head before the words could even come. “No…” I whispered, barely audible. “No, please don’t say it…”
His eyes shimmered, and for the first time since I’d known him, I saw actual tears in Caden’s eyes.
“And I did,” he whispered, the words breaking like glass in his mouth. “I gave the all-clear.”
The sob tore out of me, jarring, the kind that didn’t sound human.
My body collapsed in on itself, folding as I dropped to the floor. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. My chest heaved with silent sobs that tore through me like claws. My hands buried in my hair, yanking, gripping, like I could rip the truth out before it settled too deep.
I pressed my palms to my face, trying to block everything out, the air, the light, the sound of him still echoing in my ears.
Not real. Please—not real.
He didn’t try to touch me.
He didn’t move. Didn’t speak.
He simply stood there and let me fall apart. Let me drown in everything that I felt.
Minutes passed. Maybe hours. Time had no shape. No meaning.
Eventually, the tears ran out. I was empty. Scraped hollow.
I forced myself upright. Slowly. Mechanically. Like I was rebuilding my body piece by piece just to sit up again. My vision swam, my throat raw and torn. My hands trembled in my lap.
I looked at him through red-rimmed eyes. “You gave the order that killed my parents?”
Caden didn’t flinch. His face had gone still, cold again—walled off, but I could see it. Behind the quiet, behind the calm.
The agony in his eyes, furious and desperate and sick with regret.
“Yes,” he said.
Only that. One word.
I stared at him, hollowed out, every part of me bruised and splintered.
“How can I…” My voice broke, barely hanging on. “How can I live with that?”
“You won’t have to,” he promised. His tone wasn’t angry; it wasn’t even pleading.
It was nothing more than a shell of sound scraped from whatever was left inside him.
“I’m keeping my promise to you, Emma.”
He swallowed hard, jaw clenched like he was barely holding himself together.
“I’m going back to Crown tonight,” he continued. “I’m going to kill my Leader for what he did to you. For what I allowed him to do.”
His eyes found mine—haunted, hollow, wrecked.
I had never seen him look like that.
Not even when I first met him, all steel and silence.
Not even when I’d seen him covered in blood, screaming through the haze of battle.
This was different.
This was surrender.
“When I’m done…” he said, his throat working around the words like they were poison, “I’ll come back here, and I’ll ask you for mercy.”
A beat.
“And to make my death quick.”
Then he turned, without a second’s hesitation.
And walked out.
No glance back.
No goodbye.
Only the sound of the door closing behind him, soft as a grave being sealed.